Thursday, June 24, 2010

Eliza Rickman is a sorceress that conjures horror flick flashbacks and endless dark tunnel dreams with her haunting vocals that seemingly echo over her deceptively charming toy piano. If there is a chill that shrills the spine when you listen, you are not alone. It is the same uneasy feeling when watching one of those films where the child is the killer or the killer is a possessed toy. Nightmare within innocence. The combination of Rickman’s withering floral vocals together with the tinkering toy piano creates such an unnatural contrast that it generates within us an eerie feeling of terror. It is the same reason why the dreaded Moby Dick is a celestial white whale. The disturbing set against the soothing. A psychological conflict that most are not aware of, except for the presence of the uneasiness. Eliza Rickman creates this masterfully.

Eliza Rickman performs at Make Music Pasadena photographs by picksysticks

If this sounds like a bunch of madness, then listen to her recorded song, “Erika”. There is no toy piano in this song. Her vocals still have the haunting echo, but there is not that chill that affects us like the toy piano. Okay, maybe the toy piano itself is the chilling element. Spooky.

On June 19, 2010 , in a secluded alleyway of Old Pasadena, Eliza Rickman performed a solo show for the third annual summer festival event: Make Music Pasadena. Rickman garbed herself in a rose flurry dress, a necked kazoo, a simple drum kit at her feet, and of course, not without her trademark toy piano to fashion her one woman band. Then she sung her silly little ditty about Napoleon Bonaparte, entitled, “Foot Soldiers”.